Dr. Huma Baqai, Sr. Vice Chairperson, KCFR: The topic is Freedom for the Oppressed, and then of course who do we define as oppressed? The last session that we had, the climate was oppressed and women are oppressed, but here large section of humanity is also oppressed and how; when we talk about the oppressed, our take and view is different in different parts of the world, so right now what we constantly talk about is the war in Ukraine, we see Russia is an aggressor, so we’re going to talk about freedom for the oppressed, what is freedom, what do we understand by the term freedom in today’s world, because I also call people who work for the corporate sector as corporate slaves. I also think they’re oppressed and they need freedom. Then of course there’s Palestine, and there’s Kashmir, and there’s Chechnya, and there are several other hot spots in the world. I think poverty is an oppression, it’s a source of oppression. So we have a very interesting panel here today, who’s going to give their input on this topic. So to my left is Dr. Samia Babar who is going to read out a speech by Anwar Mansour Khan, who is a senior advocate of the Supreme Court and he is also the former Attorney General and has written and talks extensively about human rights both in the country and about situations abroad. He was supposed to join us today for this session, unfortunately, he could not make it but he was kind enough to send us his speech, which will be very nicely read out by Dr. Samia Babar. So Samia, it’s over to you and I will introduce the guests on my right once Samia’s done. So thank you John and thank you Mark, you already know them but I’ll do the formal introduction once Samia’s done.
Dr. Samia K. Baber, CEO Mediator Marketing: Thank you Huma, the title of what has been shared by Anwar Mansoor khan is ‘Oppression Leads to Breach of Peace and Security,’ To save succeeding generations from the scourge of wars was the main motivation for the creation of the United Nations. In the recent past, we see one of the permanent members having veto power in aggression against Ukraine. The war of Yemen, where Saudi Arabia with the blessing of the powerful continue to cause misery and destruction there, the members of the United Nations have subscribed to such wars. The destruction of Libya, Iraq, Kuwait, and Afghanistan are some examples of aggression causing breach of peace in the world. One of the first such disputes after the Second World War was Kashmir dispute where the United Nations Security Council intervened in their 287th meeting, passed resolution 47 of 1948, which ruled that the people settled in Jammu and Kashmir shall have the right to decide their own fate through a plebiscite. The responsibility was given to India to cause the plebiscite to be conducted under the provision of a nominee of the Secretary General of the UN for the conducting of plebiscite with full authority, thus the said state of Kashmir and Jammu was not considered to be a part of India. There have been 13 resolutions of the UNSC till 1971 reiterating the resolution 47 of 1948 to be acted upon. It is simply unfortunate that the UN could not enforce its resolutions to be implemented in its letter, and spirit since 1948 till date keeping the dispute alive. The dispute in Kashmir has not ended and can at any time result in a breach of peace between nuclear-armed neighbors. I would want to emphasize on the issue of Kashmir, where the voices of the Kashmiris are muffled by the oppressive attitude of India.
Kashmir is a stateless nation, where in 1947, the ruler of Kashmir Maharaja Hari Singh signed an instrument of accession which was accepted by Lord Mountbatten of Burma, then the Governor General of India, whereby it was categorically accepted that except for defence, foreign affairs, communication and finance, no laws of India shall be implemented in Jammu and Kashmir. Serious resentment continued and continues till date, it is the Indian army, police and other forces that are and continue to be pushed by India in Jammu and Kashmir with a view to crush the uprising or freedom fight. India call their freedom fighters as terrorists, it is said that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. India has not signed the ICC statute. Thus the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court is barred as against India and its citizens. By this, India continues to create crime against humanity, murder, extermination, deportation or forcible transfer of population, imprisonment, or other severe deprivation of physical liberty in violation of fundamental rights of international laws, torture, rape, sexual slavery, sexual offenses, persecution against all the identifiable groups, enforced disappearances of persons and other inhumane acts including terror by use of brutal force, including the use of pellet guns, and other firearms killing thousands of people, amounting to genocide in the occupied Jammu and Kashmir.
Jammu and Kashmir has its own constitution and a state within its own right, so presently under control of India on account of the UNSC resolution number 47, 1948, Article 370 of the Indian constitution accepted this fact. However, the special status of Jammu and Kashmir was in 2019 scrapped despite the UNSC resolutions. Thus, India has violated each one of them. Article 35A of the Indian constitution provided that the Jammu and Kashmir legislature has full discretionary power to decide the permanent residence of the state of Jammu and Kashmir. It gave them the special right and privileges regarding employment with the state government, acquisition of property in the state, settling in the state, and other similar rights. The provision has now been taken away. The question, thus, is as to why the United Nations keeps quiet? Especially when the Charter of the UN in chapter 7, clearly provides for action with respect to threat to the breaches of peace and acts of aggression. From the above, it is apparent and clear that the special status of Kashmir being a state itself under its own constitution was taken away by force and coercion annexed by India unlawfully by aggression causing its armed forces and paramilitary to take over the same despite serious riots against the unlawful annexation. It is also unfortunate that India has closed the entire state of Jammu and Kashmir, made it a de facto prison, violating the Geneva Convention which relates to the treatment of protected persons, being the Kashmiris. The Indians openly claim aggression against Pakistan, have violated the Pakistan airspace, peace has continued and can further be breached and that is the main issue. It is mandated upon India under the Geneva Convention to protect the said protected persons, which is being violated by India. UNHCR has been stopped from entering the area, phones have been restricted, media and press are not allowed, but the world and the UNSC keeps quiet over all the violations. It is the duty of the members of the United Nations to assume responsibility for the administration of the state of Jammu and Kashmir through the trusteeship provision enshrined in article 75 to 91 of the UN Charter.
The United Nations General Assembly Resolution 3314 has defined the term aggression being the use of armed forces by a state, in contravention of the Charter would be an act of aggression. The state of Jammu and Kashmir being a disputed territory, a state having its own constitution was annexed by the armed forces of India in contravention of the Charter of the United Nations article 5. It also provides that no consideration of whatever nature, whether political, economic, military or otherwise may serve as a justification for aggression, and no territorial acquisition of special advantage resulting from aggression is or shall be recognized as lawful. Article 7 clearly states and allows the right of self-determination, freedom and independence which is contained in UNSC resolution 47 of 1948. I must say, in the end and with a heavy heart that it is unfortunate that the United Nations has now become a platform for political maneuvering rather than diplomacy, and having power to cause to implement its resolutions for the purpose of achieving peace, permanent members of the United Nations need to think over this critical issue and deal with it strictly in accordance with the Charter of United Nations, and various resolutions passed by it, such that each resolution is implemented in terms of Chapter 7, especially Articles 39 to 51 in the Charter. In the end, whether these members choose their country’s prosperity over the Charter and their very reason for UN’s existence poses a great responsibility upon them.
Dr. Huma Baqai, Sr Vice Chairperson, KCFR: Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, that was Mr. Anwar Mansoor’s speech for this event which encapsulates the legal dimension of the entire situation that is there in Kashmir. But in more mundane terms, what is happening in Kashmir, the latest is that Yaseen Malik, who was seen as a symbol of freedom for the Kashmiris as freedom fighter, he was under protective custody and then in a jail for the longest of time, he was put in a death cell and finally he has been convicted with a terror funding case. His wife Mishaal Malik lives in Pakistan, she has a six-year-old daughter who’s only seen her father twice. Mishaal has come on the television and said several times that I live the life of a widow because even when I go back to Kashmir, I’m not allowed to see him and now he’s convicted in the terror funding case. So what you see in Kashmir is state terrorism which includes genocide as a state policy, rape, as a weapon of war and mass graves a norm. It is Kashmir now which is called the largest prison on the face of earth, when we say it is one of the most militarized region in the world, it perhaps sounds like a clichéd word but it essentially means, the last statistics that were released of the number of armed forces that are there in Kashmir, and since then the numbers have only gone up which now India has refused to release. The numbers that we have tell us that there was one armed person on six Kashmiris, and of course they’ve suffered from internet blackouts, their electricity is cut off, their schools are shut down and so on and so forth, and all of this is a part of state policy. What has triggered things or have further escalated the whole situation is the abrogation of the constitution done by Modi government.
What is happening now because of that is called demographic terrorism, because they’re trying to change the demography, they’ve changed the protective constitutional status of the valley and now they’re trying to change the demography. The Kashmiris have put up a quiet resistance and I was listening to a former RAW chief, and in his conversation he said that, when this article 370A was imposed, we thought there was going to be an uprising in Kashmir, a violent uprising in Kashmir, and we waited for that to happen, but then that violent uprising did not happen, and he said that now when we look back and see why it has not happened to us, and these are his exact words that I’m quoting, he said “the Kashmiris have decided not to die cheap and they want to carry on with this” and that is why it has been three years now and the resistance in Kashmir is alive.
Arundhati Roy is one of my favorite authors, one of the things that she writes about Kashmir rings with me every time, she says “it’s not the Kashmiris who need freedom from India, it’s India that needs freedom from Kashmir” and that’s how critical the situation is. But at the end of the day while we talk about Kashmir, new conflicts are unfolding and the latest is the Russia Ukraine conflict and the situation that it has created, we kind of understand the Ukraine situation in Pakistan far better than others, perhaps because we had a conflict next door in Afghanistan for 40 years. We continue to live with it and we know conflicts such as these don’t go away as easily. But I’m the moderator so I think I’ll stop talking and invite to very eminent speakers to tell you more about this issue and overall about the oppressed and Kashmir, so Mr. Marc Siegel it’s over to you.
Mr. Marc H. Siegel, President & CEO Siegel Associates LLC: So I’m going to try to wake everybody up so they’re wide awake when John talks. So to put out on the table the topic is the Freedom for the Oppressed and to me it’s become an unachievable goal, because so much of the people who feel they’re the quote guardians of the galaxy and guardian of freedoms are essentially western races, and you look at the different conflicts that have taken place around the world over the past decade or so, and it was really brought to life with the Ukraine crisis. I’ve been working in Moldova with the Ukrainian relief but before that, I was working in San Diego helping with the Afghan refugees that were being resettled in San Diego. So when I told people I was doing that, nobody makes a peak, it’s like so what? But every single person I can’t think of a single exception, when I said I was going to Moldova to help with the refugee crisis they are like, “God Bless You” and there’s the people in the west who feel that they are actually the guardians and protectors of freedom and the oppressed all around the world have managed to dehumanize people who are not like them, and this is the big challenge.
Even the people coming out of Ukraine now as refugees it’s gotten a lot of press about how great everybody is being absorbed into the EU countries, but very little has been made of, if you’re from Azerbaijan and you’ve been working in the factories in Eastern Ukraine, and you’ve been living there for a generation and you come out with your kids, you are not eligible for any of the EU benefits, you have to have official Ukrainian citizenship to qualify for the benefits, same people, same situation fleeing the war. What I’ve seen in Moldova is also because you have a lot of Azerbaijanis and you have a lot of Roma who are also working in the eastern part in the factories in Ukraine, people are accepting people into their houses, they will not take the Azerbaijanis, and they will not take the Roma into their homes, and it’s you know they’re getting credit and they do deserve credit for the effort they’ve made in other fields.
But the question goes back to how are you actually going to help the oppressed, if so that essentially the people with power in the world have dehumanized them to such an extent that nobody said anything when Aleppo was obliterated, nobody said anything about Chechnya, nobody said anything about Georgia, but as soon as Ukraine started getting obliterated, it’s the issue of the day and they’re the oppressed. So in many ways I’m very pessimistic about people outside of the western countries being able to address that, and one last comment is that it’s not just the people on the right, what amazes me is also, there’s a level of racist patronizing of the left in the western countries, where they’re not helping the oppressed because what’s happening to them is wrong. It’s almost like they’re little children and we’re going to decide what’s best for them, and that was illustrated recently. I’m on a committee that’s reviewing a standard on security operations and human rights, and they redefine human rights outside of the boundaries of the UN, and when I brought up that you realize, most of the changes you’re making are in conflict with the Muslim religion. It was all the people on the committee who were the quote progressives looked at me, as I’m some right-wing fascist because I’m saying that it’s conflicting with those beliefs and they came back with no, these are our beliefs and this is where we’ve raised the bar to and everybody needs to live at that level. So somehow unless you break that cycle, it’s very hard to see how anybody is going to show sympathy towards causes outside of essentially people who look like them, and you know hopefully there is some way out, I must say I can’t figure out the solution to that one.
Dr. Huma Baqai, Sr Vice Chairperson KCFR: Thank you Mark, you did wake us all up and on a very somber note, because he said that he doesn’t see this coming to an end. There is perhaps no freedom for the oppressed in near future, largely because this world has learned to very comfortably live with selective justice, and what is perhaps right for me is not right for you and so on and so forth. But I think it is coming back to bite all of us, including the western world and they will have to do everything, they started to rethink capitalism. So we are thinking about capitalism with the conscience and the new debate on how we should have a greed free capitalism so to say. But I think also the norms of justice and human rights and how humans, no matter what the color of their skin is, are still humans. So it’s not just that Black Lives Matter or White Lives Matter; All Lives Matter. And with that, I am going to request John De Blasio who’s a diplomacy security expert to speak on the topic.
Mr. John De Blasio, Chairman Continuity Global Situation: I’ll take a different approach to it. I think the idea of fairness in all things and the idea sort of freedom for the oppressed is a bit of a one of those ideas that is a goal, and is never attainable in its perfect world scenario. I think what we should seek to do is impose on ourselves as humans, a values-based ideology that exceeds and raises the standards for all, and I frankly think we’ve done a great job of that over the past 30 40 years.
I walked down the street to the old Russia house which is now the Russian War Crimes House and they’ve already had their first war crime tribunal in a Ukrainian court. The idea of the prosecution of war and the laws of war have evolved over time, and it’s impressive to watch how much humanity has evolved, and I think it’s interesting that even on the right in the United States, the feeling has been we should not allow ourselves to be subject to the International Criminal Court and other jurisdictions outside of the United States. They’ve approved of and encouraged the prosecution of criminals like Assad, like Milosevic, like the Russians in Ukraine. And I think that’s a big move forward and I think we see that the values basis in our foreign policy, and also the values basis in all policies has really moved forward.
In our constitution in the United States which is an interesting document to have been written 240 years ago, it says somewhere in there all men are created equal with a series of inalienable rights, and the pursuit of happiness. It doesn’t say anybody’s guaranteed happiness but it gives you this idea that you’re all given inalienable rights at a basic level and that you have the right to pursue happiness. That theory of the world that we are all given in alienable rights has now become much more accepted, irrespective of the color of those imposing actions on others. I find it refreshing actually, that there’s to my left two people who are very pointed in their perspective, that there’s a long way to go, and sure there’s a long way to go but I do think that there’s moments in time where you can reflect back in the history and see how far we’ve come. If you go down the street and you look and you’ll see within months, days of a war these things are being now, of course there’s an information war being persecuted by the Ukrainians. They want the world to see these things but, in fact, it is a different world, it isn’t what we experience with the genocide in Rwanda. These things aren’t tolerable what we saw in Srebrenica, the day after Bukha, it was persona non grata for the Russians and they’re going to be in the penalty box for a very long time for this. And I think it comes about that they’ve disregarded those inalienable rights to the citizens of humanity, and that’s just not something that humans will tolerate any longer.
Dr. Huma Baqai, Sr Vice Chairperson KCFR: Thank you so much John, so he’s right it’s a different world but I wonder if it’s a better world, or we just have new warfronts. There’s a battle of narratives, there’s a propaganda warfare, there’s a cyber-warfare, so I just think that we have more fronts and we haven’t closed the old ones, that’s how I see the situation. But thank you for being here, thank you for being so attentive, we had marathon sessions today so I don’t blame you guys for feeling the way you do, have a good night’s sleep, come back tomorrow refreshed for more, and thank you all.
Mr. John De Blasio, Chairman Continuity Global Situation: Thank you, Ikram, for having us.
